How spiritual can a spiritual guide be if a spiritual guide doesn’t guide you to God? I realize it sounds very much like I am spiritualizing that insightful question which has confounded intellectuals for millennia, “How much wood can a woodchuck chuck, if a woodchuck could chuck wood?”, but I am not. My question has nowhere near the profundity of said woodchuck conundrum. To me the answer is pretty obvious. How spiritual can a spiritual guide be if the spiritual guide doesn’t guild you to God? The answer is: “not very”.
Still, that didn’t stop the Russian Orthodox Church from publishing a new spiritual guide, in association with Russia’s ruling party, that doesn’t mention God.
According to a recent Reuters article (say “recent Reuters” ten times and then continue), instead of God making it into the church’s new guide, justice, patriotism, and solidarity top the list of ‘Eternal Values.’ Gee, it sounds more like a ‘conduct guide’ published by a labour union than a ‘spiritual guide’ published by a church!
According to the daily newspaper Nezavisimaya Gazeta, the spiritual guide lists, in order of importance, in the eyes of the church and ruling party: 1. justice, 2. freedom, 3. solidarity, 4. unity, 5. self-restraint and sacrifice, 6. patriotism, 7. welfare and 8. Love. Can you believe that? It looks like they stopped at eight! If they extended the list to the ever popular ‘Top Ten’ format, God may have squeaked into the list, or, er, ah, maybe not.
